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Home My Public Portal AboutMainSt_2362Follow Massachusetts Historical Commission Survey Manual instructions for completing this form.4/11 FORM B  BUILDING MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION MASSACHUSETTS ARCHIVES BUILDING 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Photograph View from NE. Locus Map (north at top) Source: Mass GIS Oliver Parcel Viewer. Recorded by: Kathryn Grover & Neil Larson Organization: Brewster Historical Commission Date (month / year): May 2019 Assessor’s Number USGS Quad Area(s) Form Number 78-120-0 Harwich B, G, I BRE.512 Town/City: Brewster Place:(neighborhood or village): Brewster Village Address:2362 Main Street Historic Name: James S. & Martha A. Paine House Uses:Present: single-family residence Original: single-family residence Date of Construction: ca. 1912 Source:deeds, historic atlases Style/Form: Craftsman/Bungalow Architect/Builder: unknown Exterior Material: Foundation: stone Wall/Trim: wood shingles Roof:asphalt shingles Outbuildings/Secondary Structures: none (second building pictured on map not extant) Major Alterations (with dates): window sash replaced Condition:poor Moved: no yes Date: Acreage:0.55 Setting: The house is situated in a mixed residential and commercial section at the eastern edge of Brewster Village characterized by summer cottages and retirement homes built in the 19th and 20th centuries. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2362 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 1 B, G, I BRE.512 Recommended for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. If checked, you must attach a completed National Register Criteria Statement form. ARCHITECTURAL DESCRIPTION: The James S. and Martha A. Paine House, built ca. 1912, is a one-story wood frame single dwelling with a gable roof designed in the Craftsman Bungalow manner. The east-facing front façade contains an off-center entrance and three triple window units; it is tucked under a sweeping extension of the main roof. The gable end facing the street contains two window pairs. The house is abandoned and situated in a tangle of overgrowth that covers the entire parcel. HISTORICAL NARRATIVE: The house numbered 2362 Main Street was very likely built in 1912 by Brewster brick and stone mason James Simeon Paine (1847-1916) on land that had once been part of the town poor farm and that bordered property he had owned since 1890. Born in Harwich, Paine had been a mariner early in life and later a machinist as well as a mason. In 1873 he married Martha A. Crocker, daughter of Watson M. and Charlotte A. Crocker of Brewster, and by 1879 the couple was living in Brewster. The 1880 census lists him as a sailor living with wife Martha and young children Israel and Lottie. Son Carlton was born in 1885. In 1890 Paine acquired the former house and land of Falmouth mariner Joseph H. Turner (1817-93), which Brewster shoemaker Silvanus Perry (1806-85) had acquired in July 1853.1 After Perry’s death the property had passed to his widow Jedidah Walker Dexter, the widow of Lyman Dexter, and at her death to her son Clark Dexter (born 1826). Dexter used the 2362 Main Street property occasionally, as newspapers document, until he sold the homestead to James S. Paine in 1890.2 The 1905 map attaches Paine’s name to the property, and by 1910 Paine and his wife shared the house with their youngest child Carlton, then a 25-year-old shell fisherman. In 1892 the town had sold Paine a small parcel of land abutting his own, and 10 August 1912, exactly a week after Martha Crocker Paine died, the town sold the widowed James Paine another three acres of “tillage land known as the town farm” that bordered his land on the west. On the site Paine built 2362 Main Street and might have moved into the smaller house. in January 1916 he sold a tract of 5 3/8 acres with a house and outbuilding on it to Ernest Algot Alm (1884-1974) of Brookline, and Paine died in November of the same year. 3 Ernest Alm had come from his native Sweden to Boston in the fall of 1910, and he was working as a coachman for William F. McQuillen (1861-1926), a paper merchant and “newspaper jobber” who began acquiring land in Brewster in 1911.4 In November 1911 Alm married Swedish immigrant domestic Hedvig Elisabeth Nelson, and he was living part of the year in Brewster by the fall of 1916. “Mr William F. McQuillen’s popular chauffeur, Mr Algot Alm, has taken a week off to attend to his cranberry crop and make his place snug for the winter,” the Yarmouth Register reported in October that year. The 1920 census lists Alm, his wife, and their children Agnes, Charlotte, and Edith in Brookline. After McQuillen’s death Alm and his family moved to Taunton, where he was a chauffeur for attorney Edmund Bassett. By 1940 Alm and his wife lived with adult daughters Charlotte and Edith, both stove foundry office workers, and Doris, born in 1926. 1 Tully Crosby to Joseph H. Turner, 6 March 1851, BCD 51:226; Joseph H. Turner to John Doyle, 18 March 1853, BCD 54:205. Turner moved with his family to Sandwich and died in Wareham. John Doyle to Tully Crosby, 27 May 1853, BCD 54:392; Tully Crosby to Silvanus Perry, 11 July 1853, BCD 63:417. 2 Clark W. Dexter, Brockton, to James S. Paine, 30 August 1890, 188:428; “Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 19 March 1892, 4, reported on Dexter’s sudden death in Brockton. 3 James S. Paine to Ernest Algot Alm, Brookline, 6 January 1916, BCD 344:196. James Paine’s obituary appears in “Brewster: James Simeon Paine,” Yarmouth Register, 11 November 1916, 8. 4 By 1918 McQuillen’s East Brewster estate was called Wild Acres. He had, according to one account, “a country-wide reputation as a leading authority” in the paper industry, in which he had worked since 1880. In 1887 he and several partners acquired the paper business of Amariah Storres and Edward N. Bement, and by 1918 he was president and sole director of Storrs, Bement and Company. He married Helen F. Nickerson Bartlett, a native of Portland, Maine, in 1894, who may have had family ties in Brewster. See “East Brewster,” Yarmouth Register, 29 June 1918, 1, and ibid., 13 February 1926, 3, INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2362 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 2 B, G, I BRE.512 In 1939 Ernest Alm sold 2362 Main Street to Robert C. and Felice E. Russell, who owned it until 1950.5 The Russells had been living in Brewster since at least 1936, when Robert Russell was named chief engineer in the development of Roland E. Nickerson State park, donated to the state two years earlier. In 1950 the Russells were living in Hudson when they sold the property to Alfred H. and Emily H. Holler; Alice M. Holler was the owner of record in 2019.6 BIBLIOGRAPHY and/or REFERENCES American Ancestors.org. Massachusetts vital, tax, and probate records. Ancestry.com. Federal and state censuses, vital records, historic maps, and “Valuation List of the Town of Brewster 1890.” Barnstable Patriot Digital Newspaper Archive. Sturgis Library website, http://digital.olivesoftware.com/Olive/APA/Sturgis/default.aspx#panel=home. Brewster Assessors’ Records, Brewster Town Clerk Archives and 1926 Town Report. Deyo, Simeon L. History of Barnstable County, Mass. New York: H. W. Blake Co., 1890. Freeman, Frederick. The History of Cape Cod: The Annals of Barnstable County. Boston: George C. Rand and Avery, 1858-62. Otis, Amos. Genealogical Notes on Barnstable Families. 2 vols. Barnstable, MA: Patriot Press, 1888. Sears, Henry J. Brewster Ship Masters. Yarmouthport, MA: C. W. Swift, 1906. Simpkins, John. “Topographical Description of Brewster.” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society 10 (1809): 72-79. MAPS Walling. Henry Francis. Map of the Counties of Barnstable, Dukes & Nantucket, Massachusetts. Boston: 1858. Atlas of Barnstable County, Massachusetts. Boston: George H. Walker & Co., 1880. Atlas of Barnstable County Massachusetts. Boston: Walker Lithograph & Publishing Co., 1910. PHOTOGRAPHS (credit Neil Larson, 2019) View from north. 5 Ernest Algot Alm, Taunton, to Robert C. and Felice E. Russell, 23 May 1939, BCD 554:86. 6 Robert C. and Felice E. Russell, Hudson, to Alfred H. and Emily H. Holler, 23 February 1950, BCD 742:544. INVENTORY FORM B CONTINUATION SHEET BREWSTER 2362 MAIN STREET MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL COMMISSION Area(s) Form No. 220 MORRISSEY BOULEVARD,BOSTON,MASSACHUSETTS 02125 Continuation sheet 3 B, G, I BRE.512 View from north. View from NW.